MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The man behind the lens.

United States wildlife photographer, Ken Schafer, whose exhibition of Falkland Islands photographs at Falkland House in London is attracting high praise, has won another international prize, this time as runner up in the British Wildlife Category of the BG Wildlife Photographer of the Year organised by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine.

His prize-winning photograph shows guillemots being pounded by a summer storm on the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, Scotland. It faced stiff competition from 19,000 other entries from more than 60 countries.

He received the prize the same day as his exhibition launched the £90,000 "Showcase" project at Falkland House, where 19 of his pictures are on display as well as his book, "Penguin Planet", containing pictures he took of all 17 species of penguins in countries around the world.

In an interview with Mercopress, Kevin Schafer, aged 50, confessed to being a "great fan of the Falklands" and a kind of "Falklands ambassador" in the United States. "I give lectures about penguins and try to talk up the Falkland Islands", he says. He first learned about the Falklands as a boy from reading a book. "I thought it looked a wonderful place. But in the 70s and 80s it was not easy to get there. When I was working on my penguin book, it took me to some wonderful places, and it was finally an excuse to get to the Falklands. My wife and I spent a month there in 1999 and loved it so much we paid a personal trip a year later for another month and made some very good friends there, including Tony Chater an d his wife on New Island, Debbie Summers of Falklands Conservation, Rob McGill on Carcass Island, and Alan White on West point Island".

Of all the places he has visited in the world including South Georgia and the Antarctic, he counts "the Falklands as one of my favourites. I would rather be sitting next to an Albatross colony on the Falklands than anywhere else on earth. It is a wonderful feeling to be a passive observer watching the comings and goings of penguins and albatross night and day. The wildlife is very accustomed to people -- and unafraid.

He says he is looking for an excuse to go back again. What does he think of the Islanders: "I just love the place, and the people", he says. "I loved just being there. You don't have a lot of privacy. Everyone knows what everybody else is doing. That's what comes with island life in a small community".

He has had experience of island life previously after taking a degree in Science and Communication at the University of Washington in Seattle wh